s, nevertheless, and for all its love, the central _ego_ of the
universe to itself, the very Alcyone round whom all other
Nature-worshippers revolve like the rest of the human constellations.
But between these and Nature there is no such barrier, and upon
Nature they lavish their love--'a most equal love,' that varies no
more with her change of mood than does the love of a man for a
beautiful woman, whether she smiles, or weeps, or frowns. To them a
Highland glen is most beautiful; so is a green meadow; so is a
mountain gorge or a barren peak; so is a South American savannah. A
balmy summer is beautiful, but not more beautiful than a winter's
sleet beating about the face, and stinging every nerve into delicious
life.

"To the 'Child of the Open Air' life has but few ills; poverty cannot
touch him. Let the Stock Exchange rob him of his Turkish bonds, and
he will go and tend sheep in Sacramento Valley, perfectly content to
see a dozen faces in a year; so far from being lonely, he has got the
sky, the wind, the brown grass, and the sheep. And as life goes on,
love of Nature grows both as a cultus and a passion, and in time
Nature seems 'to know him and love him' in her turn."

It was the umbrella, green, manifold and bulging, under Borrow's arm,
that made me ask Dr. Hake, as Borrow walked along beneath the trees, "Is
he a genuine Child of the Open Air"? And then, calling to mind
"Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye," I said, "He went into the Dingle, and
lived alone--went there not as an experiment in self-education, as
Thoreau went and lived by Walden Pond. He could enjoy living alone, for
the 'horrors' to which he was occasionally subject did not spring from
solitary living. He was never disturbed by passion as was the
nature-worshipper who once played such selfish tricks with Sinfi Lovell,
and as Emily Bronte would certainly have been had she been placed in such
circumstances as Charlotte Bronte placed Shirley."

"But the most damning thing of all," said Hake, "is that umbrella,
gigantic and green: a painful thought that has often occurred to me."

"Passion has certainly never disturbed his nature-worship," said I. "So
devoid of passion is he that to depict a tragic situation is quite beyond
his powers. Picturesque he always is, powerful never. No one reading an
account of the privations of Lavengro during the 'Joseph Sell' period
finds himse